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antonio rudiger

Sunday 18th March, King Power Stadium – Chelsea made a quick return to action against Leicester City in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Just four days had passed since their demoralizing 3 – 0 loss to Barcelona in the Champions League.

Chelsea had reached the FA Cup quarter-finals after home wins against two Premier League sides: Hull City (4 – 0) and Newcastle United (3 – 0). Before that, they’d struggled mightily to overcome Norwich City on penalties after a slightly vindictive refereeing performance in the third round replay.

Claude Puel’s side had dealt quietly and competently with Sheffield United (1 – 0), Peterborough United (5 – 1) and Fleetwood Town (2 – 0 in the replay after a goalless game at Highbury). Nigerian international Kelechi Iheanacho was City’s hero in this competition, having scored four goals against Fleetwood and Peterborough.

Antonio Conte made four changes to the team that started at Camp Nou: Willy Caballero came in for Thibaut Courtois, after the Belgian’s entertaining double-nutmeg performance against the Catalan side. Tiemoue Bakayoko and Alvaro Morata replaced Cesc Fabregas and Olivier Giroud in midfield and attack. […]

Barcelona and Chelsea clashed again in the second leg of the UEFA Champions league round of sixteen.

The teams had enjoyed very different fortunes since the 1 – 1 draw at Stamford Bridge in February. Chelsea had been beaten twice in Manchester by United and City, before scraping a 2-1 win vs Crystal Palace at home.

They were fifth in the league, four points behind Liverpool in fourth, and twenty-five points (yes you read that right, twenty-five points) behind league leaders Manchester City.

Barcelona had played four league games to Chelsea’s three, beating Girona and Atletico Madrid 6 – 1 and 1 – 0 respectively at home, and bottom club Malaga 2 – 0 away.

Surprisingly, their one draw had come against relegation-threatened Las Palmas, but the Catalan giants were eight points clear at the top of La Liga Santander with ten games left to play. Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez were the league’s top scorers at 24 and 21 goals, and all was right with the world. […]

With the exception of a 3 – 0 win when Huddersfield defended deep and let them play, every time Chelsea have used Eden Hazard as a striker this season, they’ve struggled to attack effectively, either scoring just one goal or none at all.

Today was no different: Chelsea did not register a single shot on target the entire game.

Manchester City had shown against weaker opposition (Burnley and Wigan Athletic) that they could be breached, but with both their center forwards warming the bench, Chelsea were simply not set up to take advantage.

Even more worrying though, was a heads-down attitude and lack of application from some Chelsea players at certain moments in the game. […]

The media narrative in the run up to this game was a lot Mourinho versus Conte. Or Lukaku versus Morata, Sanchez versus Hazard, de Gea versus Courtois, but the managers showed during the game that they’d put their feuding behind them now.

At the end, the game wasn’t decided so much by individual battles, but by the team that was most committed, that wanted it more. The visitors were brutally punished for errors of concentration in defence, especially as both halves wore on. United delivered some pretty tough lessons to a Chelsea team in transition, but lessons they will have to learn nevertheless. […]

The stats showed Barcelona had 73% of possession by the end of the game, but Chelsea had more (and better quality) chances – eleven shots to Barcelona’s seven, with two shots on target for each team. So did Messi & Co. starve Chelsea of possession, or was Conte’s team content to let them have the ball in non-threatening areas?

Willian was the man of the match in the Chelsea’s last game, and he was on fire tonight as well. He put the fear of God in the Barcelona defence, hit the post twice, could have had a hat trick.

Messi played well, but at the end he was limited to poaching an opportunistic goal off a defensive error. Barcelona have the advantage of an away goal going into the second leg, but the tie remains open, with a full ninety minutes to go. […]

Chelsea were back home in West London for their FA Cup fourth round tie vs Newcastle United.

Chelsea had just managed to scrape past Norwich City on penalties in the previous round, while Newcastle beat Luton Town 3 – 1, Ayose Perez (two goals) and Jonjo Shelvey (one goal) with three first half goals to quickly put the game to bed.

Both teams were coming off recent defeats though – Antonio Conte endured yet another difficult game against Arsenal in the second leg of the Carabao Cup semis midweek.
Newcastle had fallen victim to a Sergio Aguero hat trick at the Etihad, in the previous weekend’s Premier League game. Both Conte and Rafa Benitez would be looking for a positive reaction from their teams today. […]

Final game in this season’s Chelsea-Arsenal er… Quintology? Pentalogy? Quintuple? Pentad? Series of five distasteful encounters? Anyway it was going to be over after tonight’s Carabao Cup semi-final, one way or another.

Arsenal and Chelsea had played out four consecutive draws so far, although the Gunners did eventually get the win on penalties in the first meeting, in the Community Shield. In their most recent game, Chelsea hadn’t done enough with home advantage and an injury-free squad – the Carabao Cup first leg had ended up goalless.

Tonight, they had to win away from home with both their top scorer and their most creative midfielder out injured. Alvaro Morata (back) and Cesc Fabregas (hamstring) were both unavailable. Thibaut Courtois was still recovering from an ankle problem, so Willy Caballero started in his place.

Andreas Christensen returned from a head injury, but despite a promising performance from Michy Batshuayi at Brighton during the weekend, Antonio Conte opted to play Eden Hazard, Willian and Pedro as the three attackers at the Emirates. […]